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The Archives
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12.31.09Taking Nibbles at the Experience Buffet: Virtual Worlds and Branded DomainsRaph Koster's Metaplace closes tomorrow, or the user-generated/consumer-facing version of it will, in any case - although maybe it will come back as a sort of Unity3D for the Facebook crowd or something. We'll wait for Raph himself to parse the why's and could-have-beens, but I can't help thinking about what Tyler Cowen said on Metanomics this past season, in response to my snarky question about the Long Tail: BLOOMFIELD: Dusan asks, "Isn't the concept of the long tale an incredible oversimplification of online economies, which should be discarded as a popular concept?" What do you think? TYLER COWEN: Well, I wouldn't ...
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12.22.09The Emphemeral Build: Metaplace ClosingI'm incredible saddened that Metaplace is closing, and on the heels of news that Forterra has also been struggling and is looking to sell off its assets I find myself, well, kind of angry as well - primarily because I wonder why these things have to be announced before the holidays. Is there something magical about getting the news out while people are focused on other things? Is it some kind of press strategy or something? Or maybe it has to do with payroll cuts ahead of all those days off over Christmas. Maybe it's better to do lay-offs so ...
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04.10.09Across the World(s): Metaplace and Second Life Bring Interoperability To LifeSecond Lifers talked to themselves today in Metaplace (or their Metaplace avatars talked to their 'mains' in SL) as Metaversatility hosted a cross-world event that was ostensibly about developments and trends from the recent Game Developers' Conference, but which was also a significant test of having two versions of yourself in two different worlds at a time, or at the very least have a conversation that seamlessly bridged two environments. As Raph noted on his blog, a recent influx of Second Life residents to Metaplace has also led to interesting developments in cross-world communication. Of course, Raph had to point out ...
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09.04.08Metaplace and Second Life Head-to-Head: The Future of Virtual WorldsAt a panel on the future at the Virtual Worlds conference in Los Angeles, Raph Koster joined Ginsu Yoon, VP of Business Affairs at Linden Lab. Oh, and Corey Briges of Multiverse who spoke that venture capital "spaces" talk that seems to go on and on without a real point other than to get another product plug in, and Michael Wilson of Makena Technologies who made the compelling point that virtual world companies should stop reinventing the wheel and look to the wider Web for solutions to things like social networking and security and stuff. But the perspectives of Raph and ...
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08.29.08Metaplace and Second Life: Platforms, Community and Getting it RightSecond Life and Metaplace ran on parallel paths this week, each of them promising enhancements to the community communication tools - just wait for it, they say, all will be good. I hadn't paid attention to Metaplace in a while - the promise of an April Beta was pushed back as they readied the platform, tested, improved, built out the back-end and moved offices. I hadn't paid much attention to the Lab either, their silence had that sort of strange, possibly intended effect of making me not care so much - silence could be good, silence could be comforting, and since ...
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08.26.08Metapatience at MetaplaceThe April launch of Metaplace into Beta is, um, delayed, although perhaps Raph Koster's move into MMOs for everyone, which got stalled on the rocks of trying to actually WORK on all clients (they ended up focusing mainly on Flash) is close to launch. However, in the forums some dissent - and it strikes a familiar tone: "Give us information". In response to questions about the progress of selecting Beta applications, community manager Cuppycake (Cuppycake? Hmmm. I wonder if that's better or worse than "M") promises they're working on it: "We're currently in the process of working our way quickly through that entire ...
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05.28.08MMO Population Woes: Metaplace, Culture and the End of the Big Game?The Guardian is at it again - covering virtual worlds, games, MMOs as if this stuff is a real business. While other media either have a sort of "gosh, we'd better explain what an MMO is, and isn't it cute how dwarves run around with giant axes" kind of pie-eyed sensibility (and usually get it all wrong), and others are either deeply cynical or cynically shallow, the Guardian has been a source of good MMO coverage. Now, they've picked up the Raph Koster "metaMeme" about how the era of the mega-MMO is coming to a close. It's too expensive to compete ...
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